A processing unit such as a microcontroller or generally an integrated circuit (IC) may include a so-called multicore processor. For this purpose, a plurality of processor cores may be integrated on a single chip (die). A processor core usually includes an arithmetic-logic unit (ALU), which represents the actual electronic computer for executing tasks, programs, arithmetic instructions, etc., and additionally a local memory, which usually only the respective processor core is able to access. The processing unit may also include a global memory, which all processor cores are able to access.
In single-core or multicore processors for embedded systems, it is always possible to trace back the communication between two software execution processes to the reading and writing of a known memory location. This applies both to communication via global variables, where the memory address, at which the variable is stored, must be known, as well as to communication via communication channels, which at the lowest level is again based on the reading and writing of known memory locations via the direct (or indirect) addressing of these locations. In the latter case, the exchange of messages via communication channels, a software layer assumes the task of distributing the messages. For this purpose, this software layer stores, e.g., using memory tables, which message is to be written to which memory address or be transmitted to which other processor in the assemblage. For example, a software process stores a message in a local buffer and hands over this buffer to a function in the operating system or directly to the hardware driver, which is responsible for, e.g., the network card, including all required information such as for example the destination address, which may be a memory address or a network address. The operating system or the hardware driver takes this buffer and writes it either into the destination memory address or into the hardware buffer, which then transmits the data into the network. In the case of numerous receivers, this is relatively laborious.